ASUS VivoTab RT Review
by Vivek Gowri on October 23, 2012 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Asus
- Mobile
- Tablets
- Windows RT
- Vivo Tab
In this day and age of “pixel density over all”, most of the RT tablets being launched with WXGA panels, and none of them seem to be worse off for it. In the case of the VivoTab RT, it’s a 10.1” Super IPS+ panel with a resolution of 1366x768. This is a similar panel to the one found in the Transformer Prime, except with a different aspect ratio and resolution (the Prime was 1280x800). As expected, the panel quality is excellent - very bright, great viewing angles, and very good colour reproduction. Combined with the vibrancy of the Modern UI, it just looks fantastic.
Performance-wise, this is pretty good. I’d like to caution that we don’t have a way to do our standard colour gamut and colour accuracy tests on Windows RT yet, so for right now we’re limited to brightness and contrast. Max brightness is 554 nits, which if you hadn’t realized, is really, really bright. Unfortunately, if you leave adaptive brightness enabled (the setting is buried in power profiles) it’ll max out indoors at just over 200 nits, which means you end up keeping the VivoTab RT at maximum brightness for the most part with that on. The contrast ratio is just under 1000:1, so in line with the rest of the top end devices on the market (the contrast ratio at 200 nits is 932:1, so very close to the numbers at max brightness). These numbers aren’t off the charts ridiculous like we saw with the Transformer Prime, but point to a very high quality display that still performs well in outdoor settings.
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andykins - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Nah, I totally agree with Vivek's statement and I don't believe it's in any way inappropriate.lmcd - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I don't know what phrase of astonishment to use. He clearly said a Win 8 review is coming. Part of the experience is transitioning between the two modes, which is more specific to this laptablet (my hybrid term for the hybrid machines) and as such should be covered in this review specifically. Windows 8 reviews will come in Windows 8 reviews.andrewaggb - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Might not be appropriate, but I strongly agree with his assertion. I'm using windows 8 on various machines and it's not a big deal at all. Truthfully I still prefer the start button because it was less jarring, but the actual start menu was a piece of garbage. I NEVER went into the tree mess to find something, I'd just type and search, and that works the same in windows 8 (almost), except you have to hit windows-w to search settings.dananski - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I agreed with this quote and was happy to see Vivek say it. I don't know why there's no option to start on the desktop when booting your PC, but tbh, it takes one click to get there and then you're back on your normal 'workflow' (unless you accidentally manage to open a Metro App and can't find your way out). Is one click a day worth all the complaining?Pirks - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
right on Vivek! pwn those oldfags, reclaimers,etcthat's EXACTLY my impression of Metro, glad smart reviewers like Vivek at last stated the truth here
hehe I'll keep enjoiyng reclaimer's deep sucking of crapdroid cock. don't forget to swallow reclaimer :P RT is pwning ya oldfaggy ass as of RIGHT NOW LOL :)))
Pirks - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Vivek you're wrong, during recent Q&A with Surface team they clearly stated that they are being run as a profitable business from the start and hence no subsidies on the hardware, nothing at all. Hence the high Surface price of $499 and up. You should read that Q&A before spreading false rumors, thank you :)VivekGowri - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Edited to reflect this - overall point is still valid though, they're probably taking back less profit than everyone else by design. And of course, no software licensing fees.lmcd - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Why would they make the tradeoff AMD has to make when they had the S4 as an option? Or better yet, the S4 Pro? The timing was perfect! Optimus G released with it, why couldn't the VivoTab?TrackSmart - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Great review! One quick addition would make it better: Can you list the combined weight of the tablet with the laptop dock in your opening table? It would be great to quickly compare this to other form factors (i.e. laptops, netbooks, etc.)karasaj - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
You mentioned that the processor load is kind of high for typing in office for example, or loading programs - how "smooth" is the feeling of the UI? I think you said at one point that Tegra three might have seemed laggy at one point but later it was "anything under Tegra 3 would be slow" so does it seem like Tegra 3 is sufficient to power the tablet/prevent any "annoying" slowdowns?